Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Skadden and Milbank sign agreements with Trump administration

No, it wasn’t an April Fool. Three more US law firms have chosen to strike a deal with Donald Trump. Willkie Farr & Gallagher, Skadden and Milbank have each pledged $100 million worth of legal services to the administration of the new American president. The trio thus avoid the suspension of their security clearances, their exclusion from government contracts and the restrictions on access to federal buildings laid down in Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms, which have been coming thick and fast in recent weeks. These decrees are widely viewed as retaliation by the president against lawyers and firms who have defended his opponents or supported causes that run contrary to his convictions.

Of his firm’s pre-emptive deal Jeremy London, Skadden’s executive partner, declared: “Not everyone will agree with the decision we made, and I have great respect for the differing views that make us stronger as a firm. But I firmly believe that… this agreement does not change who we are.”

One of his employees, Rachel Cohen, disagreed. The associate, who had worked at Skadden in Chicago for two years, resigned in protest. The young lawyer has called for a boycott of firms that acquiesce to Trump’s strong-arming, launching a legal resistance movement, to remind young lawyers of their moral imperative to defend the rule of law. “If your employers cannot protect their employees and the rule of law, do not encourage students to work there,” she wrote in an associated guide for young lawyers.

More than 80 former Skadden lawyers sent a letter to the firm’s leadership condemning the agreement it struck with the Trump administration

Cohen is not the only lawyer to disapprove of firms signing agreements with the Trump administration. More than 80 former Skadden lawyers sent a letter to the firm’s leadership condemning the agreement it struck. “At a time when rule of law, freedom of speech, and the adversarial system collectively face existential threat, Skadden’s agreement with President Trump emboldened him to further undermine our democracy,” the letter stated.

Paul Weiss had already agreed to pay $10 million per year in pro-bono causes over the next four years to save its skin, according to boss Brad Karp, who reasoned in a letter to staff that, “We initially prepared to challenge the executive order in court [but] it was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the Administration.”

Strength in numbers

If Karp’s assessment illustrates that the no one law firm can hope to stand against the might of the executive, a movement has been coalescing around the first firm to be targeted by Trump since his return to The White House, Perkins Coie. In the four weeks since the Seattle-headquartered firm decided to sue the government, over 500 law firms – including Arnold & Porter and Covington & Burling – have moved to file a brief in support of the firm’s lawsuit against the Trump administration’s executive order. Furthermore, A federal judge, Beryl Howell, has declared Trump’s decree against Perkins Coie (a firm that represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign) unconstitutional. According to the Financial Times, however, only one of the top 20 US law firms, Freshfields, has signed the brief.

Meanwhile two other major law firms, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale, have, like Perkins Coie, chosen to fight back against what they label an “unprecedented attack on the legal profession”. According to Politicio, California-based Cooley brought Jenner & Block’s complaint to court. Paul Clement, a veteran supreme court attorney, is representing WilmerHale in his challenge to the presidential decree. For him, the “president’s sweeping attack on WilmerHale (and other firms) is unprecedented and unconstitutional,” adding “The First Amendment protects the rights of WilmerHale, its employees, and its clients to speak freely, petition the courts and other government institutions, and associate with the counsel of their choice without facing retaliation and discrimination by federal officials.”

These cases are sure to be followed with interest in the legal community, both in the US and further afield.